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Xbox One’s April update adds Voice Messages and dedicated servers for Party Chat

Microsoft has announced details on what’s included in the second wave of April’s update for Xbox One, which is now rolling out to members in the Preview Program.

There are three key new features added in today’s update which will be arriving next month for all Xbox Live players. First of all, another much-requested feature from the community was the ability to utilize voice messages. Now, players will be able to record voice messages and send them to their Xbox Live friends. A feature already available on Xbox 360, voice messages recorded on Xbox One can be played back by the recipient on the last-generation console.

Party chat sessions will now run on dedicated servers, improving the performance players experience when connecting to friends in parties. Where players previously encountered NAT issues when trying to connect to one or more people, dedicated servers should hopefully eliminate this problem. Last of all, the What’s On tab located on the Home screen, which highlights popular entertainment within the Xbox Live community, is now being rolled out to users in Canada and the UK following a trial period in the U.S.

  • Voice messages New this month is the No. 1 feature requested in the Friends and Parties area on the Xbox Feedback site > “Add audio message …” Xbox One preview program members will be able to compose and playback voice messages in the messages app when snapped on Xbox One. Quickly and easily record audio to send to your friends or others through your snapped messages app accessed through a simple quick double tap of the Xbox button. Additionally, voice messages can be exchanged between Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles.
  • Dedicated servers for party chat – We are committed to continuing to make improvements to party chat, designed to improve quality, reliability, and ease of use. We’re enhancing party chat with dedicated chat relay servers. This new service will enable Xbox One owners that may have historically had NAT issues to party chat more reliably. Parties where players are unable to form direct peer-to-peer connections for party chat will automatically leverage dedicated server infrastructure to relay traffic.
    • Currently, this service is only enabled for parties where one or more members are enrolled in the Xbox One Preview program. Those preview consoles enable the service for their party chat sessions, even if some of the party participants are not part of the preview program.
  • What’s On – The Xbox engineering team is continuing to experiment with the What’s On area, which highlights popular games, movies, TV shows, game broadcasts and clips. What’s On has been available for preview members in the U.S. and this month, the preview of this feature is being expanded to Canada and the UK as well. Additionally, the “Staff Picks” are now more personalized based on your recent game activity, and we’re introducing new experiments with Twitter Trending TV, and Game Clips for subsets of the preview audience.

The first part of April’s update was released last week for users in the Preview Program. Included was improvements to Achievements, such as an Achievement’s description now appearing with its pop-up notification, as well as Party Chat troubleshooting additions.

Source: Xbox Wire

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